The Bernard Purdie Collection Vol. 1

Few of us who are not drummers are likely to have a favourite drummer, and if we do they are probably a member of a band, say Keith Moon or John Bonham. My favourite drummer is Bernard “Pretty” Purdie, whose contribution to music has been mostly as a session musician. I have no competence to declare Purdie the “best” drummer ever, though he has been massively influential on others in his craft (inluding Bonham).

Purdie plays on two songs on which I have always loved the drumming in particular: The Five Stairsteps’ “O-o-h Child” and Tim Rose’s version of “Hey Joe”, the one that inspired Jimi Hendrix. And from there it’s a short leap to two mixes… Yes, two mixes, since he is the world’s most recorded drummer.

The native of Elkton, Maryland, did overdubs for the album Tony Sheridan recorded with The Beatles (looks like Pete Best didn’t quite cut it), played with James Brown, served as Aretha Franklin’s musical director, backed Gil Scott-Heron and played on a succession of Steely Dan albums. You hear his drumming on James Brown’s “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World”, Hall & Oates’ “She’s Gone”, BB King’s “The Thrill Is Gone”, and on Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway’s “Where Is The Love”.

He is credited with inventing the “Purdie Shuffle” (see him demonstrate it in these two videos: Part 1 and Part 2). At 72 he is still performing. See his website.

Over the two mixes I’ve kept things down to one song per artist, with one exceptions: King Curtis appears in successive songs: on his own version of “Whole Lotta Love” from the Fillmore West live album and on the track by Shirley Scott.

As always, the mix is timed to fit on a standard CD-R. The mix includes home-skinned covers. PW in comments.

Nice to see that Bernard Purdie is your favorite drummer. You obviously have great taste in drummers. However, Purdie wasn’t the drummer on “O-o-h Child” by The Five Stairsteps. The drummer on that song is Jerome “Bigfoot” Brailey who became the drummer with P-Funk later in the 70’s. Since Purdie is your favorite drummer I thought you’d like to know that.

For Brailey’s involvement we have his own claim and the fact of his links with the Five Stairsteps, an unreferenced wikipedia reference that is repeated verbatim on several websites, and a likewise unsupported reference on the Soul Patrol newsletter: http://soul-patrol.com/newsletter/in/view1.php?id=1041

There is no clear proof either way that I know of. But the evidence seems to weigh stronger in favour of Purdie, especially since he backs up his claim with some detail about the session which, to my knowledge, has not been refuted by anyone involved, as one might expect if he was lying.